US supreme court

Subterms

    More stories

    • 275 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      There’s rage at this Roe v Wade mess – and those on the left who didn’t see it coming | Emma Brockes

      by

      There’s rage at this Roe v Wade mess – and those on the left who didn’t see it comingEmma BrockesFrom anti-Hillary Democrats to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who clung on at Supreme Court, unlikely targets are being identified for blame After the initial shock, the blame. On Monday, when news broke of the leaked US supreme court draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, millions of horrified Americans sought emotional release. “I am angry,” said Elizabeth Warren, voice shaking, leading a pack of reporters straight over a flowerbed outside the supreme court. Her face ignited with rage as she reminded them that 69% of Americans are against overturning the abortion legislation. “The Republicans have been working towards this day for decades,” she said. In the background, a man shouted, “You want to dismember children in the womb!”For many of us, that man – the you-want-to-kill-babies guy – and his ilk were not the first target for righteous abuse. It’s hard, in moments of duress, to get much satisfaction from reiterating an existing and long-held revulsion, particularly when its subject is beyond reasonable reach. When considering the rightwing architects of this moment, there was no “what if” in attendance; all the what ifs belonged to the left. Political purists who in 2016 urged Democrats to avoid voting for Hillary Clinton (hi, Susan Sarandon) were the first in line, and social media echoed to the sound of, “We told you this would happen.”Biden condemns efforts of extremist ‘Maga crowd’ to overturn Roe v Wade abortion protections – as it happenedRead moreSacrificing the good in pursuit of the better and winding up with the absolute worst – a dynamic as familiar to British as to American leftwing politics – was, in this moment of horror, a more enraging consideration than flat hatred of the right. From revived outrage at the Bernie bros, it was a quick descent into rage against various champions of the left. “You know who I blame for this?” said a friend. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” The late supreme court justice’s vanity in hanging on to her seat, her overconfidence that Clinton would win, her refusal to listen to warnings from the Obama White House that, should the unthinkable happen and the Republicans regain the presidency, the first casualty would be Roe v Wade – her fundamental enjoyment, one assumed, of being RBG when she could have ceded her seat to an Obama appointee – twisted us up into pretzels. I love Ginsburg, so all this had about it the extra and extremely female zing of self-harm.Oh, and Clinton wasn’t off the hook either. “If she’d bothered to campaign in Michigan,” said another friend sourly, “none of this would’ve happened.” All the terrible, bad-tempered fights of that election flew back up into the air, like a water column after a bomb. The only Republican who came in for similar ire was that idiot Susan Collins, senator from Maine, a supporter of abortion rights who had nonetheless voted in line with her party to confirm both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court. Both had assured her, she said at the time, that they wouldn’t go after Roe v Wade. Shocked! Shocked, she was, this week to discover these were not men of their word.Of course, all this fury was mere displacement for the fundamental truth that rightwing forces were smarter, more organised, disciplined and talented in prosecuting a digestible narrative – “don’t kill babies” – than the fractured and dissembling left. Progressives tried to rally towards concrete solutions. There were things to be done – in the first instance, register to vote. (After less than a year of citizenship, I hadn’t. This weekend, I will). There was the call for fundraising. Celebrities started throwing around $10,000 matching donations to anyone giving to local abortion funds.And both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, as well as senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, hyped the necessity of codifying Roe v Wade in Congress, a move backed by President Biden that would enshrine the right to abortion in federal law irrespective of actions taken by the supreme court. It sounds good, and has the advantage of generating political action. But it is also a long shot, a case of last-resort measures, and too little too late. Earlier this year, Democrats tried to codify Roe, and while it passed the House it failed in the Senate, overcome by a filibuster. (Then “we must end the filibuster”, tweeted Sanders. None of this can happen quickly, if at all.)The fact is that if, as Warren said, the Republicans had been planning this moment for decades, rigging composition of the supreme court with precisely this endgame in mind, there was, irrespective of the scale of public outrage, no immediate way to turn back. In this first week of shock, before anger might become effectively organised, there was only the tiny compensation of the blame spiral.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsRoe v WadeOpinionAbortionElizabeth WarrenUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)WomencommentReuse this content More

    • 238 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Is Biden willing to go against the supreme court to save Roe v Wade? Politics Weekly America – podcast

      by

      According to a draft majority opinion published by Politico this week, the US supreme court has voted to overturn Roe v Wade in the clearest sign yet that the constitutional right to abortion will probably be taken away from millions of Americans very soon.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Moira Donegan about what it will take to stop the majority conservative bench, whether Democrats are willing to pull rank, and if they don’t, whether it is even accurate to call the US the land of the free

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      To enter our prize draw, Worthy Winners, nominate someone who you think deserves to win one of 10 pairs of tickets to this year’s Glastonbury festival. Entrants and nominees must be 18 and UK residents. Listen to Thursday’s episode of Today in Focus on abortion rights Sign up to First Edition for free at theguardian.com/firstedition Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

    • 238 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      After victory in the US, now the far right is coming for abortion laws in Europe | Sian Norris

      by

      After victory in the US, now the far right is coming for abortion laws in EuropeSian NorrisThe attack on Roe v Wade has roots in well-funded organisations whose tentacles have spread across the Atlantic For those of us who have been watching the assault against abortion in the US for years, this week’s leaked supreme court draft opinion – which could pave the way for an overturning of Roe v Wade – came as no surprise.Roe v Wade protects the right to an abortion in the US up to the point a foetus can survive outside the womb, and the religious and far-right have been gunning for it since it was introduced in 1973. Evangelical ideologues, far-right actors and radical-right billionaires have organised to undermine women’s right to safe, legal abortions through a combination of violence against clinics and doctors, dark money and political influence.‘Unnecessary suffering and death’: doctors fear for patients’ lives in a post-Roe worldRead moreSo, how did the US get here?After years of legal assaults that restricted abortion access and targeted clinics in Republican states; years of disinformation spread by “crisis pregnancy centres”, where women are persuaded to not have abortions; and years of burdensome demands on women to endure ultrasounds, gain parental consent and put up with counselling in order to have a termination, Trump’s election opened the door for abortion rights to end in the US.Ultimately, it required courts, not politicians, to end abortion. That’s where the Federalist Society comes in. Headed by Leonard Leo, the legal organisation supported anti-abortion lawmakers across the US into positions of influence where they could draft laws to ban abortion after 15 weeks … 12 weeks … six weeks … and completely. The end goal was for anti-abortion states to try to implement one of these laws, where it would be challenged again and again until it reached the supreme court.To do that, the anti-abortion movement needed supreme court justices who would enact its agenda. They got their way with the help of the leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who blocked President Obama from nominating a supreme court judge, leaving the field open for Trump to promote the anti-abortion Neil Gorsuch. After that came two more Trump-appointed justices: Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.That was the judicial assault on abortion rights. But that assault could only happen with the help of money … and lots of it. Luckily for the anti-abortion movement, there are plenty of wealthy foundations keen to fund the cause. They include the DeVos, Prince, and the Templeton Foundation, which have helped to support organisations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Heritage Foundation and Focus on the Family.Backed by billionaire funding, organisations such as the ADF took the fight against abortion rights to the courts – helping to secure a ban on buffer zones and so-called “partial birth abortion”, and supporting the notorious Hobby Lobby case, which stated that employers should not have to cover birth control on employees’ healthcare plans if it was against the owner’s religious beliefs.These organisations and their billionaire backers have transatlantic reach. Take the DeVos and Koch Foundation-supported Heritage Foundation, which has welcomed a range of Conservative MPs to discuss free speech – including Oliver Dowden, Priti Patel and Liam Fox. It was announced on the day of the supreme court leak that Lord David Frost would soon be addressing the organisation.Then there’s the ADF, which spent $23.3m in Europe between 2008 and 2019, when its European arm’s youth conference played host to the Conservative MP Fiona Bruce.ADF International intervened in Belfast’s notorious “gay cake” case and is allied with organisations that lobbied to further restrict abortion in Poland. The US anti-abortion legal organisation, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a second religious freedom organisation that takes on legal cases to challenge abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, has also operated in Europe. Set up by the Republican Pat Robertson, who famously accused feminism of turning women into lesbians, ACLJ’s chief counsel is a former Trump defence attorney, Jay Sekulow. ACLJ spent $15.7m in Europe from 2008-2019.So far you can see how big money, the judiciary and religious freedom movements have come together in the US and Europe. But there’s another active force that has pushed us towards the end of Roe: the far right.Across the far-right infosphere, men discuss the need to ban abortion in order to reverse what they term the “great replacement” – a conspiracy theory that posits white people are being “replaced” by migration from the global south, and that, in the US in particular, this replacement is aided by feminists repressing the white birthrate via abortion.Conspiracy theories such as the “great replacement” sound extreme. But when it comes to the US abortion row, such views are mainstream. Take this quote from the former Republican congressman Steve King, who represented Iowa between 2003-2021. He claimed “the US subtracts from its population a million of our babies in the form of abortion. We add to our population approximately 1.8 million of ‘somebody else’s babies’ who are raised in another culture before they get to us.” Far-right theories circulate globally – that’s why people outside the US shouldn’t just act in solidarity with American women at this time, but prepare to stand up against the possible erosion of their own hard-won rights.
      Sian Norris is the chief social and European affairs reporter at Byline Times. She is writing a book about the far-right attack on productive rights called Bodies Under Siege
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.comTopicsRoe v WadeOpinionAbortionUS supreme courtWomenHealthUS politicsLaw (US)commentReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump justices accused of going back on their word on Roe – but did they?

      by

      Trump justices accused of going back on their word on Roe – but did they? Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett face accusations of having misled politicians and the public but experts say people may have read into their statements what they wished to hear Chief Justice John Roberts has condemned the leak of a draft supreme court opinion overturning Roe v Wade as a “betrayal”. But for the majority of Americans who support the right to abortion access, the true betrayal was committed by the five justices who have initially voted to overturn the landmark case.That is especially true of the three conservative supreme court justices who were nominated by Donald Trump: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. During their Senate confirmation hearings, each of those three justices was asked about Roe and Planned Parenthood v Casey, the 1992 case that upheld the right to abortion access and could now be overturned as well.US supreme court justices on abortion – what they’ve said and how they’ve votedRead moreThe comments that the three justices made during those hearings are now coming under renewed scrutiny, as they face accusations of having misled politicians and the public about their willingness to overturn Roe.Republican Senator Susan Collins, who supported Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and repeatedly reassured the public that they would not vote to overturn Roe, has expressed alarm over the draft opinion and a sense that the justices told her something they later reversed.“If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office,” Collins said, while noting that the draft opinion is not final.Republican Senator Lisa Murkowksi, who also supports abortion rights and voted in favor of Gorsuch’s and Barrett’s nominations, said the draft opinion “rocks my confidence in the court right now”.Murkowski told reporters on Tuesday: “If the decision is going the way that the draft that has been revealed is actually the case, it was not the direction that I believed that the court would take based on statements that have been made about Roe being settled and being precedent.”During his 2017 confirmation hearings, Gorsuch said: “Casey is settled law in the sense that it is a decision of the US supreme court.” When Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate judiciary committee in 2018, he similarly described Roe as “important precedent of the supreme court that has been reaffirmed many times”, and he defined Casy as “precedent on precedent” because it upheld Roe.But legal excerpts say Gorsuch and Kavanaugh’s comments about Roe and Casey did not clearly indicate how they might vote in a case like Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, raising the prospect that some people may have read into their statements only what they wished to hear.“When people are nominated to the supreme court and they testify in Senate confirmation hearings, they are very careful about their language,” said Professor Katherine Franke of Columbia Law School. “Something like ‘settled law’ actually has no concrete legal meaning. What it means is that that’s a decision from the supreme court, and I acknowledge that it exists. But it doesn’t carry any kind of significance beyond that.”During her Senate confirmation hearings, Barrett was arguably even more careful than Gorsuch and Kavanaugh in her language about Roe. She refused to identify Roe as a “superprecedent”, meaning a widely accepted case that is unlikely to be overturned by the court. Instead she promised that, if confirmed, she would abide by “stare decisis”, the legal principle of deciding cases based off precedent.However, Barrett’s writings before joining the supreme court gave a clear indication of her thoughts on Roe. In one 1998 paper, Barrett and her co-author defined abortion as “always immoral” in the view of the Catholic church. She also signed off on a 2006 advertisement that described Roe as “barbaric”.“I’m sure that both Senators Collins and Murkowski asked pointed questions of all of these nominees, trying to get them to clearly say that they would not overrule Roe v Wade,” Franke said. “Murkowski and Collins maybe heard what they wanted to hear in order to feel better about voting to confirm these nominees, when the rest of the world knew quite clearly that they were ideologically and legally opposed to abortion.”For that reason, many progressives expressed little sympathy for Collins and Murkowski as they reacted with bafflement to the draft opinion.“Murkowski voted for Amy Coney Barrett when Trump himself proclaimed that he was appointing justices specifically to overturn Roe,” progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday. “She and Collins betrayed the nation’s reproductive rights when they were singularly capable of stopping the slide. They don’t get to play victim now.”Murkowski voted for Amy Coney Barrett when Trump himself proclaimed that he was appointing justices specifically to overturn Roe.She and Collins betrayed the nation’s reproductive rights when they were singularly capable of stopping the slide. They don’t get to play victim now https://t.co/6i7b3g08lN— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 3, 2022
      Rather than showing remorse, progressives are demanding that Collins and Murkowski take action to protect abortion rights.Both Collins and Murkowski have said they support codifying Roe into law, but that proposal does not have the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Senate filibuster. Progressives are now calling on Collins and Murkowski to support a filibuster carveout to enshrine the protections of Roe into law.“To salvage their legacy, Collins and Murkowski must join with Democratic senators to do whatever is necessary to protect Roe in federal law,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “No meaningful action will happen without a filibuster carveout now.”But Collins and Murkowski have so far given no indication that they would support such a carveout. Unless they do, the court stands ready to overturn nearly 50 years of precedent and erase the national right to abortion access, even though a clear majority of the country would oppose that decision. A CNN poll released earlier this year found that 69% of Americans are against overturning Roe, while just 30% support a reversal.If the court follows through with the draft decision, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion. Those bans could force people to travel far from home to reach states where abortion is legal, seek medication illicitly or attempt to terminate a pregnancy through dangerous means. Many pregnant people will also be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.And Collins and Murkowski may have nothing to offer Americans but regret.The Guardian’s Jessica Glenza contributed to this reportTopicsUS supreme courtAbortionLaw (US)US politicsDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden warns LGBTQ+ children could be next target of Republican ‘Maga crowd’

      by

      Biden warns LGBTQ+ children could be next target of Republican ‘Maga crowd’President warns of new attacks by Trump-dominated political party after supreme court ruling draft leak on abortion Joe Biden has warned of new attacks on civil rights as the supreme court prepares to strike down the right to abortion, telling reporters at the White House that LGBTQ+ children could be the next targets of a Trump-dominated Republican party he called “this Maga crowd” and “the most extreme political organisation … in recent American history”.Contraception could come under fire next if Roe v Wade is overturnedRead more“What happens,” the president asked, if “a state changes the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit under the way the decision is written?”Biden’s remarks, at the end of a brief session on deficit reduction, referred to a leaked draft of a ruling by Justice Samuel Alito. One of six conservatives on the supreme court, Alito was writing on a Mississippi case which aims to overturn both Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which guaranteed the right to abortion, and Casey v Planned Parenthood from 1992, which buttressed it.The Mississippi case is expected to be resolved in June. The leak of the draft ruling to Politico, which reported that four other conservatives on the nine-justice court supported it, caused a storm of controversy and anger.In a statement and remarks on Tuesday, Biden condemned Alito’s reasoning and intentions and called for legislation to codify Roe into law.But the president has faced criticism within his own party for seeming reluctant to contemplate reform such legislation would require, namely abolishing the Senate filibuster, the rule that requires 60 votes for most bills to pass.A lifelong Catholic who nonetheless supports a woman’s right to choose, Biden has been eclipsed as a strong voice against the attack on abortion rights by high-profile Democratic women including the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who spoke angrily outside the court on Tuesday, and the vice-president, Kamala Harris.Harris’s struggles as vice-president have been widely reported but on Tuesday night, speaking to the Emily’s List advocacy group in Washington, she seemed to hit her stride.The former prosecutor and California senator said: “Those Republican leaders who are trying to weaponise the use of the law against women. Well, we say, ‘How dare they?’“How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body? How dare they? How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?’”She asked: “Which party wants to expand our rights? And which party wants to restrict them? It has never been more clear. Which party wants to lead us forward? And which party wants to push us back? You know, some Republican leaders, they want to take us back to a time before Roe v Wade.”At the White House on Wednesday, Biden took brief questions. He was asked about sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine and about “the next step on abortion once this case gets settled”.“As I said when this hit, as I was getting on the plane to go down to Alabama, this is about a lot more than abortion,” he said. “I hadn’t read the whole opinion at that time.”The 79-year-old president then gave a lengthy, somewhat rambling answer about “the debate with Robert Bork”. Bork was nominated to the supreme court by Ronald Reagan in 1987. Biden was then chair of the Senate judiciary committee. The nomination failed.US supreme court justices on abortion – what they’ve said and how they’ve votedRead moreAt the White House, Biden said Bork “believed the only reason you had any inherent rights was because the government gave them to you”, a stance with which Biden said he disagreed.Biden also said Bork had opposed Griswold v Connecticut, the 1965 case which established the right to contraception – a right many on the left fear may be left open to rightwing attack once Roe, another case concerning privacy, has been overturned.In her speech the previous night, Harris said: “At its core, Roe recognises the fundamental right to privacy. Think about that for a minute. When the right to privacy is attacked, anyone in our country may face a future where the government can interfere in their personal decisions. Not just women. Anyone.”The vice-president also said: “Let us fight for our country and for the principles upon which it was founded, and let us fight with everything we have got.”TopicsLGBT rightsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsAbortionUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

    • 225 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden condemns efforts of extremist ‘Maga crowd’ to overturn Roe v Wade abortion protections – as it happened

      by

      US politics liveUS politicsBiden condemns efforts of extremist ‘Maga crowd’ to overturn Roe v Wade abortion protections – as it happened
      Biden: ‘This Maga crowd is really the most extreme political organization that exists in American history’
      How soon could states outlaw abortions if Roe v Wade is overturned?
      Protesters swarm outside US supreme court
      Contraception could come under fire next
      California pledges to protect abortion rights
      What the justices have said and how they’ve voted on abortion
       Updated 1h agoRichard LuscombeWed 4 May 2022 16.09 EDTFirst published on Wed 4 May 2022 09.34 EDT Show key events onlyLive feedShow key events onlyFrom More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Here’s how Americans can fight back to protect abortion rights | Rebecca Solnit

      by

      Here’s how Americans can fight back to protect abortion rightsRebecca SolnitA Democratic majority in both houses of Congress could make abortion a right by law, and it’s worth remembering Mexico, Ireland and Argentina are among the countries that recently did so How do you strip away cherished rights? The best strategy is incrementally and undramatically, a death of a thousand cuts. That’s how Republicans were hacking at voting rights until recently, when the rest of us woke up and began to pay attention to the cumulative impact of voter ID laws, the shuttering of polling places, restrictions on voting by mail, and all the rest. Reproductive rights have been under attack for more than 30 years – by rightwing terrorism against abortion providers all through the 1990s and as recently as 2015 in Colorado Springs, but also by a sort of attrition, narrowing down access by shutting clinics, limiting how many weeks pregnant you can be, and other such measures. Overturning Roe v Wade upends all this stealth and incrementalism. Judging by the reaction, it may be exactly the kind of overstep that leads to a backlash. After all, the great majority of Americans support the right to choose.There are many kinds of actions to take in response to this likely overturning of a fundamental right to bodily self-determination and privacy. (And it’s bitterly amusing that a court that wants to set policies reaching into the uteruses of people across the country apparently feels violated by having its own internal workings exposed with this leaked draft opinion.) Direct support for the poor and unfree people who will be the most affected is already under way – and by unfree I mean those who are under the domination of a hostile partner, family, church or community. People have organized to offer travel to clinics for those far from them, access to abortion pills, and other forms of support. But by backlash I mean and am hoping for the kind of backlash Trump’s election and subsequent outrages provoked, the 2018 election that swept the Squad and many other progressives into office and took back the House of Representatives. A Democratic majority in both houses could make abortion a right by law, and it’s worth remembering that Mexico, Ireland and Argentina are among the countries that recently did so.What is striking this time around in the US both about the rightwing agenda and the response is that it is broad enough to build powerful coalitions. The human rights activism of the 1990s was siloed: though the same voters and politicians might support LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights and racial justice, largely separate campaigns were built around each of them, and the common denominators were seldom articulated.This time around – well, as I wrote when the news broke: “First they came for the reproductive rights (Roe v Wade, 1973) and it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a uterus in its ovulatory years, because then they want to come for the marriage rights of same-sex couples (Obergefell v Hodges, 2015), and then the rights of consenting adults of the same gender to have sex with each other (Lawrence v Texas, 2003), and then for the right to birth control (Griswold v Connecticut, 1965). It doesn’t really matter if they’re coming for you, because they’re coming for us.”“Us” these days means pretty much everyone who’s not a straight white Christian man with rightwing politics. They’re building a broad constituency of opposition, and it is up to us to make that their fatal mistake.It’s all connected. If Texas wasn’t suppressing voting rights so effectively, rightwing politicians might not be running the state. If non-Republican turnout can overcome the restrictions, Texas itself – now leading the attacks on abortion rights and trans rights – could elect Beto O’Rourke governor in November and turn Texas Democratic. O’Rourke tweeted today: “If they want states to decide, then we must elect a governor who will protect a woman’s right to abortion.”The right knows that it represents a minority and a shrinking minority as Americans as a whole become more progressive and as the country becomes increasingly non-white. They have made a desperate gamble – to rule via minority power, for the benefit of the few, which is why voter suppression is so crucial a part of their agenda. It cannot be a winning strategy in the long run. But in the short run it can perpetrate immense damage to too many lives and to the climate itself. The revelations should strengthen our resolve to resist by remembering our power and strengthening our alliances, winning elections, and keeping eyes on the prize.
      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionAbortionUS supreme courtLaw (US)Roe v WadeGendercommentReuse this content More

    • 200 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      'A radical decision': Biden condemns leaked US supreme court opinion on Roe v Wade – video

      by

      President Joe Biden on Tuesday blasted the ‘radical’ draft opinion suggesting the supreme court may be be poised to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade case that legalised abortion nationwide, saying it would threaten ‘a whole range of rights’ if it holds. Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, Biden said he hoped the draft would not be finalised by justices, contending it reflects a ‘fundamental shift in American jurisprudence’ that threatens other rights such as privacy and marriage

      US politics – live updates More